Hat on Top, Coat Below

Consuming, Not Just Producing

April 2, 2012

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my birthday presents from Mr. Karen was a Kindle Touch (his research about which Kindle version to get was as much of a gift as the thing itself). I felt like maybe I should hand in my geek card for being so very late to get an e-book reader, but since I’ve been helping to produce e-books for quite a long time as part of Distributed Proofreaders I feel like that gives me some credibility in this area so I’m going to keep my card. Having now had a couple/few weeks to play with the Kindle, I can give it a positive review. So far I’ve only used it to read books; I can’t comment on other features like listening to music (I have an iPod for that), other than to say that the browser does work well enough to allow me to log into the visitor wireless network at my office to get new items onto the Kindle that way. I’ve bought some titles from Amazon, checked out a couple from my public library, and downloaded one from Project Gutenberg (Princess of Mars, because I saw and enjoyed the John Carter movie and now want to read the books). I haven’t had any problems getting books on it, either wirelessly or via USB. I haven’t had any problems reading on it; it’s easier on my eyes than some of the paper books I’ve got on my stack. I have had a few difficulties figuring out how to do certain things like deleting highlights/bookmarks. The user’s guide that’s on the device is searchable, but it has yet to have any of the answers I’ve been looking for. For those, I’ve turned to my old friend Google, which usually leads me to what I need sooner or later. I still have to think about how to access certain functions, since some things are done by pressing and holding, some are done by tapping unlabeled areas of the screen, and some by touching icons, but I’m sure that stuff will get stored in my sense memory before too long. Now I’ve just got to decide what kind of case to get for it; so far I’ve been using the box it came in to protect it in my backpack, and that’s obviously not an elegant solution.